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Robert Capa on D-Day

The Robert Capa D-Day Project has received the 2014 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) Award for Research About Journalism. (Click here for the announcement.) The 2014 Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), with 8,000 members, is the country’s largest journalist organization.

A. D. Coleman has received The Photo Review Award 2015 “for outstanding contributions to photography, including the investigation of Robert Capa’s D-Day photographs.”(Click here for a report.)

This series of posts began in June 2014 when the distinguished photojournalist J. Ross Baughman, who had contributed an earlier Guest Post on painters using photographs as source material, emailed to ask if I would consider publishing his analyses of Robert Capa’s D-Day negatives and the legend of their subsequent fate.

After reading Baughman’s draft, exchanging some emails with him, and doing some online fact-checking, I happily accepted his offer. What I found online indicated the availability of a goodly amount of relevant material that expanded on his version of the story and substantiated his conclusions. Rather than ask Ross to rewrite and extend his draft, already polished and resolved, I decided to undertake that task, in order to make the case for an alternate narrative as thoroughly as possible.

The links below, in reverse chronological order, will take you to Baughman’s challenge to the myth, then to my responses and those of others (plus more from Baughman), the most recent first. Think of this as the journal of an investigation. I suggest starting with the earliest post and working your way forward from there.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and John Morris (d) (2/12/17): In which I extend my analysis of the involvement of John Morris in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Morris’s “new theory” of the fate of Capa’s film collapses under the weight of its own improbabilities.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (9) (11/16/16): In which I conclude my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: The truth about Capa’s D-Day images confronts ICP director Mark Lubell.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (8) (11/13/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Cynthia Young hides the truth about Capa’s D-Day images.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (7) (10/26/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Richard Whelan hides the truth about Capa’s D-Day images.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (6) (10/23/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Richard Whelan hides the truth about Capa’s “Falling Soldier.”

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (5) (7/3/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Cornell et al obstruct an unauthorized Capa book and film.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (4) (6/29/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: Cornell funds — and blocks — independent Capa research.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (3) (6/26/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: the first posthumous monographs.

Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (2) (6/22/16): In which I continue my analysis of the involvement of Cornell Capa and the International Center of Photography in starting, elaborating, and spreading the Capa D-Day myth. In this installment: the early years.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (29) (5/22/16): In which I add important (and accurate) information concerning Amphibious Armored Vehicle 10, the “wading Sherman” behind which Capa sheltered briefly. With notes re Donald Winslow’s new day job, and John Morris’s new book.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (28) (3/14/16): In which I add important information concerning Amphibious Armored Vehicle 10, behind which Capa sheltered briefly. With a note re the fatwa placed on me by Jean-François Leroy, the grand mufti of Perpignan’s Visa Pour l’Image festival.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (27) (8/13/15): In which I discuss the attack on our research project by Gabriel Coutagne, Photo Editor of the website of the French daily paper Le Monde — the second of two such efforts from the La Vie-Le Monde Group, a Paris-based media conglomerate.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (26) (8/9/15): In which I discuss the attack on our research project by Yasmine Youssi, Arts Editor of the French entertainment magazine Télérama — the first of two such efforts from the La Vie-Le Monde Group, a Paris-based media conglomerate.

All Greek to Me: APhF 2015 (8/6/15): In which I report on this year’s edition of the Athens Photo Festival, and my public exchange there with Magnum’s Patrick Zachmann following a presentation based on this Capa project.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (23) (7/9/15): In which I describe the awards ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, for the 2014 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) Award for Research About Journalism, and begin a discussion of Normandy researcher Patrick Peccatte’s response to our project.

Alternate History: The NPPA and Full Disclosure (Not) (4/6/15): In which I file a second formal complaint with the Ethics Committee of the National Press Photographers Association, this one over the NPPA’s breach of journalistic ethics in neglecting full disclosure of conflict of interest when publishing its recent feature article on this Capa project.

Alternate History: Robert Capa, John Morris, and the NPPA, 5 (3/29/15): In which I conclude my evaluation of Young’s highly biased “neutral report,” which contains exactly 75 words of mine in its 7200-word total, and my diagnosis of the compromising long-term relationship between the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and John Morris, and the organization’s devotion to the Robert Capa myth.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 21 (3/15/15): In which I conclude my dissection of John Morris’s “new theory” of why he’s not responsible for 70 years of misinformation about Capa’s D-Day films, as enunciated by the former LIFE picture editor to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 20 (2/8/15): In which I continue my dissection of John Morris’s “new theory” of why he’s not responsible for 70 years of misinformation about Capa’s D-Day films, as enunciated by the former LIFE picture editor to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 19 (1/27/15): In which I begin my dissection of John Morris’s “new theory” of why he’s not responsible for 70 years of misinformation about Capa’s D-Day films, as enunciated by the former LIFE picture editor to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 17 (11/30/14): In which I exchange emails with John Morris, and discuss his retraction this past summer (in an interview with photographer Mark Edward Harris) of central components of his previous narrative re Capa’s D-Day films.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 16 (11/2/14): In which I discuss the deceptions regarding Robert Capa’s 35mm negatives from June 4-6, 1944 perpetrated by the late Richard Whelan, the original “Consulting Curator” of the Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 15 (10/26/14): In which I discuss the implications of the survival in fine shape of Robert Capa’s 35mm negatives from June 4-6, 1944, held by the Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography. With some pointed questions for Cynthia Young, current curator of that archive.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 14 (10/19/14): In which I go into further detail in my description of Robert Capa’s 35mm negatives from June 4-6, 1944 (and other of his negatives from that assignment), which sit intact in the Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 13 (10/12/14): In which I report that, contrary to John Morris’s 70-year-old fiction, Robert Capa’s 35mm negatives from June 4-6, 1944 rest, in pristine condition, in the Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 12 (8/31/14): In which I report that David Kogan, the new Executive Director of Magnum, refuses to “devote any time to answering … questions” re l’affaire D-Day de Robert Capa, and video producer Craig Duff blames some technical glitch for the appearance of an image by a U.S. Coast Guard photographer in the middle of a sequence of Capa’s Omaha Beach pictures.

Guest Post 14: Q&A with John Morris (a) (7/29/14): In which, as promised, John Morris — who assigned Robert Capa to cover D-Day at Omaha Beach and supervised the subsequent handling of his output in fulfillment of that assignment — responds in some detail to a set of questions I posed. Not the same old same old. First of three parts.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 11 (7/27/14): In which I present an exchange of emails between former LIFE picture editor John G. Morris and myself concerning Robert Capa’s actions on D-Day and the subsequent fate of his negatives, culminating in a promise from Morris to respond to a set of questions I posed.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 10 (7/6/14): In which I itemize the manifold errors re Capa’s D-Day images in Stephen E. Ambrose’s 1994 bestseller, D-Day: June 6, 1944, The Climactic Battle of World War II, while using the two actual facts he includes to establish the timeline of Capa’s arrival on and departure from Omaha Beach.

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day, 4 (6/17/14): In which I read carefully Capa’s caption notes for the 4 rolls of 35mm film he sent to London, discovering that only one of them contained images of the landing — thus exploding the myth that he made 106 images of that epic battle.

“The whole series by Coleman and his other guests are convincing, in part because of the experience and obvious expertise of those concerned, but also because of the careful and precise building of their case and the presentation of evidence for it.” — Peter Marshall, >Re: PHOTO

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A. D. Coleman, Critical Focus, 1995

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